Chapter Text
There was something to say about keeping one's blood cold and the head above the shoulders or whatever other poetic turn of phrase that basically boiled down to being patient and responsible.
Two characteristics that definitely had never been linked to Jin Ling's name.
He could already hear, in his head, his father scolding him, and then his uncle, and his other uncle and then his other other uncle too. His mother, though, no. She would be too kind to reprimand him for his wrong doings -she would just look at him with a sad expression on her face, a distant look in her eyes that would make it seem like she was seeing someone else in his place, and then she would hug him. Sweet words would reach his ears even while buried in her arms, and she’d tell him to be careful, to not take away someone else from her too, to not make her cry.
Well, next time Jin Ling would be more careful. He definitely will!
If only there could be a next time.
At this point, Jin Ling wasn't sure of it.
His night hunt hadn't gone that well. An euphemism. It had gone terribly, irremediably wrong.
First his sword had been pulled out of his hand by the monster he was hunting, then he had completely lost sight of it. When the creature's talons had come down on him, Jin Ling had been totally unprepared.
Maybe Jin Ling should have listened to his teacher when he told him that he was not ready to go yet, and on top of it not alone … but at the moment it had not mattered.
Jin Ling could feel the cuts in his back burning and getting infected, the fabric of his golden vest sticking to his skin due to blood.
Strength was leaving his body quickly and he could barely remember how he had escaped from the monster - he had fallen down a ravine, probably hit his head too on the way down.
The only thing of importance at the moment was to find refuge, protection, help.
Jin Ling was starting to feel desperate.
He was in Yiling, far away from the territories of his family, in a place forgotten from the immortals and from everybody else.
That counted as a death sentence.
The possibility of never seeing his parents and his siblings again, all his family, suddenly sent a shiver down his mauled back.
There were tears clinging to the corners of his eyes yet Jin Ling kept going. Slowly, very slowly but he put one foot in front of the other, making his way through the gnarled trees as fever started to take over his body, making him shiver.
After what felt like forever advancing step by step, a sound from far ahead, or maybe close by, picked up his feverish attention. It sounded like a melody. A lonely call. Another person? In that desolate place?
Jin Ling tried to follow that humming. If there was someone, most probably they would help him. And if the one he found wasn't actually human… Well then, it would make no difference for his current situation.
Passing another twisted tree, following the gentle sadness of that tune, Jin Ling reached a clearing. It was as gloomy as the rest of that dead forest, but there was a light coming from a hanging lantern on a stick rooted into the soil. Next to it, someone was sitting on the ground, picking up herbs and putting them in a wicker basket. Long flowing hair half tied up with a red ribbon, black robes with crimson flames on the hems. Gentle hands that examined a plant before carefully putting it away.
Oh wonderful -had Jin Ling stumbled upon a fairy?
For a brief moment he felt like the air was ripped from his lungs and Jin Ling stumbled, grasping at a tree bark to regain stability and moaning out his aches.
The noise alerted the fairy who turned their head in Jin Ling's direction.
A pair of enticing silver eyes locked with his gaze as lips parted in surprise and the melody stopped abruptly. There was only one word for what Jin Ling was seeing: beautiful.
Then Jin Ling's entire world went dark.
With a burning sensation on his back, slowly, very slowly, Jin Ling opened his eyes again.
There was no longer a dead forest surrounding him but a run-down shack. Heh, what an upgrade. If it didn't require too much energy that he didn't have at the moment, Jin Ling would have covered his eyes with an arm so not to be disturbed by the light of a candle burning somewhere else in the room. It was night, then…
"You're finally awake," came a soft voice in the general direction of the candle.
This time, appealing to what little energy was left in his body, Jin Ling turned around. More like rolled on the pallet he was laid on, but this undignified action shall not be recorded in the annals.
With Jin Ling's great surprise, the fairy was sitting there, a book in hand, fully concentrated on it. Such a private picture that Jin Ling felt bad looking at, like he was spying this person in his intimacy yet couldn't look away.
Oh, he was gorgeous. Jin Ling had a friend who could wax all the poetry in the world but that wasn't his style. He went straight to the point. And the point was that this was the most beautiful person that Jin Ling had ever seen. Maybe he had hit his head too hard when he had fallen, maybe not. Who knew.
The long, flowing hair didn't hide the delicate face adorned by plump lips, but two fans of dark lashes now managed to conceal the eyes that had so astounded Jin Ling the first time.
It seemed that the fairy boy had been expecting an answer from the one occupying the bed, and when nothing came, he looked at Jin Ling straight in the eyes.
Oh! He felt like a thunder hit him. No word was coming out of his mouth even if he opened it multiple times, probably looking like a freshly caught fish. And he could feel all the blood gathering on his face.
"Is the fever returning again?" asked the fairy boy, worry evident in his voice. He extended his arm to touch Jin Ling's forehead with the back of his hand, but halted before he could commit such an intimate act.
So he had at least a defect! Fairy boy wasn't good with social clues!
Though that didn't seem to deter him from his mission to help.
In less than a heartbeat, fairy boy was standing and half hanging out of a door to shout at somebody.
"Auntie Qing, quick! He's woken up but the fever seems to have returned!"
It didn't take much for a woman dressed in old mended clothes to enter the room, a bag in hand, and crow into Jin Ling's personal space. Not that there was much space in the shack to begin with.
She started touching Jin Ling in very specific places and he immediately recognised the way he was being handled. A doctor. Jin Ling felt like breathing a sigh of relief. So he had been helped then. Immortals, was he a lucky one!
"What's your name? Do you remember what happened? Do you know where you are?" she fired question after question at him, checking his eyes’ response with the candle that she had stolen from the low table.
Jin Ling was still too dazed by the situation, by not being in what looked like a civilized place but in the company of the most gorgeous boy he had ever seen that he barely uttered a "... Yiling?" back to the doctor.
With a chuckle, she lowered the candle back on the table.
"One out of three. Not bad, you're getting there boy," then she turned to talk at the fairy boy who was still hanging at the door due to lack of space, "some days more of recovery and he'll be good to go. Is that feasible for you, A-Yuan?"
Fairy boy nodded, his hair swinging with the movement, so delicate that it made Jin Ling want to card his fingers through them.
"Better feed him something though," the doctor said before rising up. "I'll leave the rest in your hands then."
They both nodded at each other in familiarity before exiting the door one after the other.
For a moment Jin Ling was left alone with only the company of his thoughts.
So he still was in Yiling. What else did he know? Yiling wasn't a rich village to begin with, so the people who helped him mustn't be the local elite given the place they were living in (bare and run down) and clothes they were wearing (old and mended). But the woman was a doctor, so it was a positive thing. They knew what they were doing.
A loud rumble resonated in the room. Now that Jin Ling was more awake, he gingerly moved a bandaged hand to his belly. He was hungry. A-Yuan was probably seeing to that though, and Jin Ling knew he couldn't hope for much given the situation but he still was wishing for a feast. He was sooo hungry.
His gold robe was missing. He didn't remember discarding it but it had already been in tatters on his back when he stumbled upon fairy boy. In its place there was a black outer robe with flames or something similar to it crudely stitched in the hems. Jin Ling recognised it as the clothes that fairy boy had been wearing in the clearing.
Once again Jin Ling felt the blood rush to his cheeks. His other hand, the one without bandages, went to close the lapels of the vest around his chest. The fabric was rough under his fingers yet Jin Ling felt his heart flutter. A-Yuan must have been taking care of him. That boy had a big heart, so poor and yet sacrificing his belonging for the sake of someone else who he didn't even know. His mother would have approved of such actions and just by thinking of her, something warm bloomed inside of Jin Ling. He burrowed deeper in the robe and laid down again, sighing.
Not much later, A-Yuan opened the door again, a tray in his hands. He carefully sat down on his knees, waiting for Jin Ling to rise up to sit before laying the first plate in his lap. A plain soup with something that looked like lotus roots in it.
"Can you manage or do you need help?" he asked, voice soft like it was normal for him to be that gentle.
Jin Ling looked at the spoon in his hand, considering briefly the idea of being spoon-fed by such a beauty. He had more dignity than that though, and if he wanted to impress A-Yuan he would better show off a bit.
With a serious expression, Jin Ling nodded before getting the spoon from A-Yuan.
The soup tasted as it looked, making him miss his mother's delicacies. Nonetheless, Jin Ling slurped it down like he hadn't eaten in days. It might have been a possibility, considering he had no idea how long he had been unconscious.
Between giving back the empty bowl to A-Yuan and receiving a plate of insipid looking congee, Jin Ling tried to question fairy boy on the situation, his voice still raspy from disuse.
"What happened?"
Fairy boy took a moment to look at Jin Ling, properly look at him, assessing what could be shared with him and to what degree. Jin Ling found that he liked having those silver eyes focused on him.
Plump pink lips parted, and A-Yuan started narrating the events up to that moment.
"I was out picking up medical herbs on the side of the burial mounds. It's not the safest place but I can manage it on my own, usually. Then I heard some odd noises and you stumbled down on the ground in front of me. Pretty beaten up."
Jin Ling was finding the congee the most awful thing he ever had the displeasure to eat, not helped by the tale of his failure. In front of him, A-Yuan grimaced in empathy at the distaste that showed on his face with every spoonful.
"Whatever monster attacked you did quite a number. Well, I tried to help you at the best of my abilities with what I had at hand, changed your torn robe with mine and brought you here," fairy boy briefly nodded at the room around them. "My home. You've been out for two days due to your fever…"
The torture of the congee over, Jin Ling put down the plate on the tray and opened his mouth to ask questions of his own, but fairy boy was quicker to go on with his tale.
"Don't worry, my father went immediately out to take care of what attacked you. It wouldn't do to leave something so dangerous roaming around."
Then A-Yuan turned his back on Jin Ling, searching for something hidden between piles of books.
When he turned, Jin Ling's bloodied and torn tunic was in his hands.
"What I want to know is... why was a Jin cultivator hunting in the Yiling Patriarch's land."